1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reference state output system, a reference state output method, and a computer readable medium on which a reference state output program is recorded and, more particularly, to a reference state output system, a reference state output method, and a computer readable medium, on which a reference state output program is recorded, which are preferably applied when the reference state of contents on an electronic mail server or the World Wide Web (to be referred to as WWW hereinafter) server is output.
2. Prior Art
In recent years, with development of networks represented by Internet, it is frequently performed that an information distributor distributes information such as news to a plurality of referrers as broadcast mails or the like on the requests of companies or the like or that pieces of information are disclosed on homepages.
The concepts of relationships among the company, the information distributor, the referrers, and the information will be described below with reference to FIG. 20. FIG. 20 shows a conceptual diagram of the relationships among the company, the information distributor, the referrers, and the information.
As shown in FIG. 20, a company 601 requests the information distributor 602 to carry advertisements on electronic mails or homepages. The company 601 requests an information distributor 602 to provide information related to reference conditions to know market needs and the tastes of respective consumers.
However, the information distributor 602 automatically collect reference states for costs or the like to replay to the request of the company 601, and requires more accurate reference states without loading information referrers 603, 604, and 605.
More specifically, the information distributor 602 must easily and accurately obtain information (to be also referred to as a reference state hereinafter) representing specific contents in which the information referrers 603, 604, and 605 are interested.
For this reason, in a system in which an electronic mail or a homepage is referred to, a more accurate device used to cause the information distributor 602 to know the reference states of the information referrers 603, 604, and 605 is conventionally required.
In the past, when a person who wants to know reference states corrects reference states related to information, the person calculates time for which the information is displayed on a screen to collect the reference conditions.
In this case, it is assumed that the longer the display time of the information is, the more a referrer is interested in the information (article or the like). In this manner, in the prior art, the degree of interest in information can be collected as a reference state.
However, the prior art has the following problem. That is, collected display time of information does not necessarily represent the degree of interest in the information.
More specifically, information carried on an electronic mail or information on a homepage is constituted by a combination of characters and images. For this reason, different information referrers require different times for recognizing the contents the information on the basis of the characters or the images.
Therefore, even if a plurality of persons display the screen for the same time to refer to information, these persons do not necessarily have the same degree of interest in the information.
This point will be described below with reference to FIGS. 21 and 22. FIG. 21 shows a conceptual diagram of reference times of an electronic mail in a prior art, and FIG. 22 shows a conceptual diagram of reference times of a homepage on a WWW server in a prior art.
In the example shown in FIG. 21, a company 401 requests an information distributor 402 to carry an advertisement.
The information distributor 402 uses, as an electronic mail, information (advertisement information) related to the advertisement requested from the company 401. This electronic mail is distributed to a distributed mail referrer A403, a distributed mail referrer B404, and a distributed mail referrer C405 through a network.
Here, it is assumed that the distributed mail referrer A403, the distributed mail referrer B404, and the distributed mail referrer C405 receive electronic mails each having the same contents. It is assumed that the distributed mail referrer A403, the distributed mail referrer B404, and the distributed mail referrer C405 are interested in the advertisement information of the received electronic mails at the same level.
In this case, for example, it is assumed that the distributed mail referrer A403 understands the contents of the advertisement information for 1 minutes, and that the distributed mail referrer B404 understands the contents of the advertisement information for 3 minutes, and that the distributed mail referrer C405 understands the contents of the advertisement information for 2 minutes.
In this manner, since different persons have different speeds at which information is understood, the times required for displaying information to understand the contents of the information are different from each other. Therefore, the degrees of interest in the information cannot be accurately known by comparing the display times with each other.
In addition, as shown in FIG. 22, when a homepage on the WWW server 502 is referred to, the same problem as described above is posed.
In the example shown in FIG. 22, an information referrer A505 and an information referrer B506 refer to the contents of a homepage on the WWW server 502 of an information distributor 501 by using browsers 503 and 504, respectively.
At this time, the information referrers understand the contents of the information from the contents of the homepage at different speeds. Therefore, the degrees of interest in information cannot be accurately known by simply comparing the display times of the information with each other.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above circumstances, and has as its object to provide a reference state being capable of accurately outputting the degree of interest in provided information of an information referrer, a reference state output method being capable of accurately outputting the degree of interest in provided information of an information referrer, and a computer readable medium on which a reference state output program being capable of accurately outputting the degree of interest in provided information of an information referrer is recorded.
As described above, according to the present invention, reference times per predetermined number of characters of pieces of information are calculated every person who refers to the information, the reference times per predetermined number of characters for pieces of information are collected, the standard deviation of reference times of each person who refers to the information is calculated. On the basis of the results, as the degree of interest, for example, the deviations of the reference times per predetermined number of characters of pieces of information are calculated, so that the degree of interest in information of the person who refers to the information can be accurately calculated and collected. In addition, in the system of the present invention, parts, i.e., a storage unit, a standard deviation calculation unit, and a degree-of-interest calculation unit may be arranged in one of servers constituting a network, clients such as terminals, and proxy servers.
When the degrees of interest of persons who refer to information and pieces of personal information of the persons are combined to each other, the degrees of interest of groups of persons who refer to information, e.g., pieces of information classified by generations can be totalized.
More specifically, in the present invention, a reference time is acquired every information included in an electronic mail or a homepage, and data are stored for different pieces of information.
The reference state output system, the reference state output method, and the computer readable medium on which the reference state output program is recorded according to the present invention can be applied to a system in which an information distributor provides information to referrers on the request of an information provider such as a company.
In the degree-of-interest calculation unit, the degrees of interest in pieces of information is calculated on the basis of the stored reference states, and the degrees of interest are edited to obtain data classified by articles.
Therefore, the company or the like can accurately know an article in which persons who refer to information are heavily interested (the article can be determined by the magnitudes of deviations).